It is common practice when feeding bales to animals to place the bale in a feeder comprising a frame which surrounds the bale in an attempt to minimize waste of feed from the bale by forcing the animals to feed at the feeder location rather than spreading the feed about on the ground. A typical feeder construction comprises an open frame which can result in waste of feed material simply by wind blowing feed off of the bale onto the ground surrounding the feeder.
Some feeders comprise a lower bunk area comprising a perimeter wall overtop of which the animal reaches to feed. Typical constructions involving a lower bunk area however comprise an open frame supporting the bale thereabove such that it is more common for the animals to pull the feed directly from the bale suspended above the bunk so that the feed is again spread about the ground externally of the feeder causing considerable waste.
In yet further designs the frame centrally locates the bale relative to the surrounding bunk wall which includes a plurality of feeding stations spaced thereabout. Prior art designs generally either position the bunk wall too close or too far from the central location where the bale is supported. When the bunk wall is too close to the bale supporting area, the animals tend to pull the feed externally of the feeder such that considerable feed is wasted on the ground. When the bunk wall is positioned too far from the central bale location, the animals typically cannot reach the central area of the feeder so that feed is again wasted internally within the feeder.